I studied Arabic my freshman year of college. I've forgotten a lot of what I learned, but I've been wanting to revisit the language and continue learning it. If you're interested in studying and learning it together, let me know! The book series we used was very good, so you may want to look into buying the first one or two. Alif Baa concentrates on teaching you the alphabet, and some basic words, and the others (Al-Kitaab Part One/Two) move onto teaching you how to hold conversations and grammar.

Something worth considering is that "Arabic" actually refers to multiple dialects, but some of them differ enough from the others that they may as well be considered their own language, much like Spanish and Portuguese. The aforementioned book series concentrates mostly on al-fusha (pronounced like foose-ha), which is the type of Arabic used to write the Quran (see Classical Arabic). In terms of usefulness, this is considered by most a good place to start off, since:

- It's the formal language used for things like news, lectures, books, etc.

- Most of the Arabic-speaking world knows it (although from what I understand, you might get some odd looks for using it in casual contexts)

- It's supposedly a good point for moving on to the other dialects once you know it

You may also want to look into getting an Arabic dictionary after you learn the alphabet. The one I used in college was the Hans Wehr Arabic-English dictionary.